ANALYSIS OF STYLISTIC AND DISCURSIVE ERRORS IN MASTER’S THESIS WRITING

Abstract

The quality of academic writing is a crucial indicator of research competence at the postgraduate level. Master’s theses are expected to meet established standards of academic style and discourse organization; however, many texts demonstrate persistent stylistic and discursive deficiencies. This study investigates the most frequent stylistic and discursive errors found in master’s thesis writing and examines their impact on textual coherence, clarity, and academic credibility. Employing a qualitative research design, the study analyzes a corpus of master’s theses written in English by non-native speakers through stylistic and discourse-oriented textual analysis. The findings reveal that common stylistic errors include inappropriate lexical choice, redundancy, informality, and syntactic complexity, while discursive errors primarily involve weak cohesion, unclear thematic progression, and inconsistent argument development. The study argues that these problems are closely linked to insufficient academic writing training, limited genre awareness, and the influence of native language discourse patterns. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of systematic academic writing instruction and proposes pedagogically relevant strategies for improving stylistic accuracy and discourse competence in postgraduate education.